Off Limits To Depression Triggering Foods

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What's This?

Depression is just a simple mix of sad emotions that are often results of some stressful situations that are taking place in our lives. This is common to people who undergo a phase in their life where stress overtakes the body. It is then called clinical depression when your moods or emotions are generally giving you a low self-esteem or interfering with your day to day activities and are affecting your health greatly. It can be due to extreme sadness from a loss, anger or frustration on someone or even yourself, illness or some traumatic and stressful events that have happened. Depression can lead to more serious actions, even life-threatening.

While most people go for psychological therapies such as the highly recommended talk therapy with a psychologist, others result to “emotional comfort foods.” When times get rough, we have the tendency to overeat to shoo away our stress or depression. There’s something in food that is so comforting, but most people do not realize that there’s a hidden danger to this. Foods can actually contribute to your depression or even worsen your situation. It can be an addictive move and may lead to further damages to your health if not properly treated. Here are some foods that we take comfort from that are quite unhealthy in overcoming depression.

Sugar and Sweets. This is something we all love to have, especially for the broken hearted. But what we do not know is that high sugar intake can ultimately add to our depression. Excessive eating sweet foods like chocolates will give sudden rise to our supposedly normal glucose levels. Our brains depend on a balanced glucose supply, so if we over eat sugary or sweet foods, it can affect our brain functions, often targeting our moods and functions. Yes, you’ll feel a little energetic after having a bar of chocolates, but what happens to you after? You may experience fatigue, dizziness, anxiety, and depression. You can still have a bite of your favorite sweets but on a manageable and healthy amount.

Alcohol. Are you in for a celebration or for depression? Alcohol is one of the major comfort drinks that people often have when they’re depressed. Numbing their bodies and their minds by consuming bottles or glasses of alcoholic beverages lets them release their anger or frustration. What most people do not know is that alcohol does not only affect our general health, but also our behavior. While extreme alcohol drinking may lead to kidney and liver problems, it can also make you do things that are way beyond your limits. You can be too aggressive, harm yourself or other people. A full night of pure alcohol party can also cause minor problems a day or a few hours after like extreme headache, dizziness, and vomiting. You can avoid major depression if you know how to manage and limit your alcohol intake. A little too much of something is always bad.

Caffeine. There are debates about the benefits and disadvantages of caffeine to depression. There are some people who’d feel a little relieved from depression after a cup of coffee, while there are others who feel they need more than a small cup of caffeine to ease their feelings. This can be the one that’s damaging to health and adding to your depression. Caffeine is known to induce insomnia that is why some people drink coffee for them not to fall asleep. If a person is depressed and needs sleep, he/she must avoid having a cup of coffee. There are also some people who consume caffeine slightly higher than the average amount. Abrupt disconnection from caffeinated products can result to depression. This theory depends on the person’s health state.

Food additives, substitutes, and preservatives. We often result to foods that are easy to prepare or eat when we feel depressed as we may lack energy to do some things like cooking or preparing a healthy meal. Foods with food additives or preservatives could hinder the absorption of our body’s needed nutrients. We should also be careful in choosing the foods, even the fruits and vegetables we buy from the market. These kinds of commercial additives are proliferating in the market nowadays. These additives include MSG, food coloring, artificial sweeteners, among others. Unfortunately, a range of food additives can contribute to depression and such, like insomnia or difficulty sleeping, restlessness, and anxiety.

Fatty foods. Foods that are high in hydrogenated or trans fat can also contribute to a person’s depression. These are commonly found in junk foods such as chips, crackers, fast food, cookies, etc. Even without depression, these kinds of food should not be tolerated as it can lead to serious health problems if not properly managed.